The Forces of Evil

In this volume of essays, the authors delve into how evil forces within our culture subjugate us to shame and degradation. Within the following essays, we discover that, in many ways, evil and violence are incorporated into our cultural institutions as a means of conveying a greater cultural narrative. Evil can take a variety of forms, with contextual and qualitative variables being critical to the manner in which audiences understand and ‘decode’ these varied representations of evil. Exploring cultural apparatuses, such as the role of popular entertainment and even academic reactions to evil, and themes as wide as cannibalism, child murder, and the concept of gender and sexuality, together these papers also speak to the important idea that evil can be hidden and can take unexpected and surprising forms. Within these essays we learn how these rather rooted ideologies have survived through folklore and through texts, influencing our present conceptions of normative behaviours. Culled together from the 10th Annual Conference on Perspectives of Evil and Human Wickedness, the essays here represent a landmark in the field of Interdisciplinary Studies.